Growing Up
by GroovyKat
Summary: Mark and Princess through Anderson's eyes. A short bit of meh.


**Growing up**

Ahhh could this be a PWP? Possibly. It has no real point or purpose, but I was bored and just dribbled on about nothing for an hour.

Actually it gave me a pretty natty idea for a fic, really ... Perhaps I shall look in to that.

Disclaimer: Nope, I still don't own G-Force or Battle of the Planets.

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It was a gloomy Tuesday afternoon as he slowly walked along a brightly lit corridor in the training wing of the Neptune facility. 72 hours previous his team had returned from a particularly taxing battle against Spectra on a small moon in the Crab Nebula. The five of them were harried and exhausted, one seriously injured and two of them battle-bruised and shaken after an explosive-set-wrong detonated too early.

The team commander had spent much of the flight back to Earth on a gurney in the Medical bay of the Phoenix with the Swan sitting dutifully by his side. As usual she blamed herself for the mishap and had spent the last few days unwaveringly putting herself through tougher training and rigorous hours in the explosives wings trying to ascertain just what went wrong.

He found it incredibly tough to see her strain herself so hard that she was in tears as she trained. He heard comments about her pushing herself through nausea and even vomiting in her desire to perfect herself further. He wanted to put a stop to it and order her to just take a break and eat, sleep, or shower. It would have been well within his power to do so, but he knew wouldn't be able to convince her to leave the base. She wouldn't leave until she knew Mark was okay and had been released from the facility.

It absolutely stunned him to hear the reports that Princess had not been to see Mark while he was in Medical. He felt sure there was something behind the scenes between Princess and Mark that went far beyond friendship and the team. They were far too in sync and familiar with each other not to have shared a bed at least a few times throughout the years. For him to hear that she'd not even walked into the medical wing, let alone sat by her commander's side was alarming. He honestly expected her to stay by his side 24/7.

For years he'd laughed off rumours that the Swan and Eagle were interested in each other. In his eyes they were both still young children. It wasn't until recently that he'd noticed his kids were all growing up around him.

Princess especially.

When she came to him Princess was only a pretty young girl with pigtails and rosy cheeks. She was such a shy little creature, feminine in such an innocent way. For the first twelve months it was only Mark that she would open up to. She seemed genuinely scared of Jason and cowered or whimpered when in his presence. Tiny was as shy as she, so there was no communication at all between the two of them. Keyop was just an infant.

Her friendship with Mark began immediately. The first moment he held his small hand out to her in introduction and their eyes met there was a connection. The young lad had been dealing with heartache of his own, having lost his father early in life and then dealing with his very sick mother. Until the day Princess was introduced into the family he'd never seen a smile in the boy's eyes. The moment he saw her, however, the smile appeared. It was as though her very presence brought life back into him. Her energizing presence was one of the things that made Anderson fight every argument about having a woman on the G-Force team. He fought tooth and nail to keep Princess with him, even going so far as to apply for legal adoption. On the team or not, Princess would stay.

Keyop's introduction was yet another thread in the tapestry of his young daughter. The entire project panicked over just what would transpire once the youngster was added to the line-up. While Jason and even Tiny protested his inclusion, Princess and Mark embraced the new life with the passion of new parents. She took a motherly stance while he stepped up as the father in the wings. A photograph of them, one he kept hidden in his desk, was of a six year old Princess, holding the precious bundle in her arms while Mark, eight in age, but adult in spirit, stood protectively behind them both. If not for the youthful faces and smiles, he would have sworn the two of them had produced the young infant themselves.

Although not a romantic man at all, Anderson had to put it down to sheer destiny. No matter how much either of them tried to seek affection from others, it was obvious noone else but the two of them would really matter to each other. It honestly confused him as to why both Mark and Princess had sought love and sexuality from outside sources. He'd never put any rule on them to state they were forbidden to see each other. He had no problem with it, in fact when the problem was raised in a board meeting several years previously it was Anderson who encouraged the participating members to allow the Swan and Eagle to find their own way.

Unresolved sexual tension was more dangerous a beast than a fighting pair of lovers. Anderson was adamant that if Mark and Princess had the urge to roll around in bed naked with each other, it was most certainly to be allowed.

…Provided the two of them were professional about it, of course.

It baffled him.

Or was it really happening, and the relationship had soured?

He honestly didn't know what to think as he quietly entered the observation pod of one of the training rooms inside the facility. His intention was to watch Princess training and attempt to analyze her current state of mind without she knowing he was watching.

Although the room was dark except for the glow of the room below, he knew someone else had the same idea. The silhouette of the team's second eldest member showed him still with an arm in a sling, but hunched over the window in complete and utter concentration to the woman below.

He wanted to suggest that Mark was analyzing her with the same psychoanalytical scrutiny as he would, but he knew otherwise. The G-Force commander watched in complete awe, lust and admiration. His breath practically moaned as he breathed and his face moved with her movements. If she leapt, his face motioned upward with her, if she swayed, his head swayed also. His hand clutched hard at the windowsill when she landed. It felt like some perverse dance of lovers between dimensions, and he felt more perverse for standing by to watch.

He figured he should announce his arrival by way of clearing his throat. Mark saved him from it by speaking softly.

"Good afternoon, Chief."

Anderson shifted his eyes to Mark's reflection in the window and noticed that Mark was watching him through the same image. "I see you were released from Medical."

Mark nodded and let his gaze fall back on the young woman in the training room. "How long has she been training that hard?"

"Too long," Anderson answered as she strode up to take up position beside Mark.

Mark let out a displeased grunt that fogged the glass in front of him. "Since we landed."

It wasn't a question, but Anderson replied as if it was. "Yes, Commander. She's blaming herself for what happened."

He shook his head. "It wasn't her fault. I saw the reports from the Mass Spec analysis of the residue of the uniform. The explosives were at fault, not her." He ran his hand down the glass as if he were stroking her image. "They were so unstable that she's lucky the whole lot of them didn't explode in her pouch."

"Commander …"

"I could have lost her, Chief." His eyes continued to move with the image of the training woman down below. "We're lucky that I was the only real injury."

Anderson's lips pursed and he kept an eye on Mark through his reflection. "Commander, I need to ask you something personal."

A small laugh escaped the G-Force commander. "No, Chief. Princess and I aren't dating."

Anderson's brow flicked high. "Clairvoyant."

Mark let a whimper of a smile turn the corner of his lips upward, but his attention remained on Princess. "It's the only question you would ask me that'd be personal."

"No," he corrected firmly. "I could also ask you why not."

Mark finally took his attention off Princess and tilted his head toward the Chief. "Because it isn't right."

"In whose eyes, Commander?"

Mark let the question wander through his mind for a long while. He shifted his focus between the floor, Anderson and Princess. "It's not fair on the team for Princess and I to be a couple. It'll just cause problems."

"I know your team as well as you do, Mark, and I can tell you with all honesty that they'd have no problem with it so long as you and Princess kept it low-key."

Mark stared at the window and focused upon his own reflection. "I don't know, Chief."

"You need to work it out." He motioned toward the mirror with a flick of his chin. "Before it's too late."

His eyes blinked to refocus his gaze at Princess. "I've been fighting it for so long."

Anderson dropped a hand in his lab coat pocket and set his clipboard on a chair beside him. "Your job isn't to fight your feelings or needs, Commander."

Mark actually smirked. "My only battle should be with Spectra."

Anderson looked worriedly down at Princess, who seemed so exhausted that she was only operating on autopilot to finish her exercises. "I have new mission parameters for you, Commander."

Mark looked down at his slinged arm and then back up at Anderson with a raised brow. "Med leave, Sir. I'm grounded for another week."

Anderson shook his head. "Your mission is to go down there and stop her from further hurting herself."

Mark shook his head and closed his eyes. "I don't know if she'd listen. If she thinks she messed up, then …"

"You're the only one she does listen to, Mark." Before the Commander could formulate a rebuttal, Anderson continued. "She's down there because she thinks she was responsible for you being unconscious for three days."

"Two days," Mark corrected softly. "And I didn't see her once in the 24 hours they had me locked in that damn room with nothing but a TV for company." He took a breath. "She didn't come and see me at all, did she?"

Anderson shook his head. "Not to my knowledge."

"So she's been doing this for three days straight? How is she even functioning?" His attention focused on Anderson. "And how did you Ilet/I her do this for three solid days?"

"She's not listening to us."

Mark's expression was one of incredulous disbelief. "I'm getting her out of here."

Anderson watched over his shoulder at Mark storming from the room. "Please do."

He knew it wouldn't take long, and it didn't, for Mark to appear in the doorway. He voyeuristically stared down to watch the show play down before him.

Even though he couldn't hear a word through the thick glass, he had a fair idea of what Mark might be saying – he was the one who taught them lip-reading, after all.

IMark stood in the doorway and just watched her a moment. His eyes were narrowed and steeled as he assessed her. Every movement she made, every staggered step and shift, he watched closely. To anyone else it might have been seen as a stare of scrutiny; to those who knew him it was a look of worried adoration.

His body twitched in response to her stumbling from a leap and within a second he was on the floor beside her. His hand touched at her shoulder to guide her gaze toward him.

"Princess, honey, are you okay?"

Her eyes rose, but her body did not. She was exhausted; her gaze screamed it. "Mark…"

His hand slid affectionately along her shoulder to her cheek. "You need to stop."

Her eyes clenched shut and she shook her head. "I messed up, Mark. I got you hurt. I have to make sure it doesn't happen again."

He moved his face close to hers and coaxed her eyes open with a delicate blow of air against her eyelids. As they fluttered open he drew his thumb along her bottom lip. "It wasn't your fault, Princess." His voice lowered in tone and in volume. "God, I'm so lucky it wasn't you that got hurt."

She blinked and inhaled a breath shaky enough to shudder her whole body. "Mark. I'm so sorry."

He tugged her into his arms and let her nestle herself into his chest. He kissed her head and wrapped himself around her. /I

Anderson didn't need to see any more. Whatever would come of their encounter inside the training room he didn't have to know about – all that mattered was that Mark was able to make her stop.

He paused only a second as he gently closed the door to the observation room. He absolutely didn't have a problem with Mark and Princess finally acting on their mutual need for each other – in fact he sorely wanted it to happen.

Perhaps it was time to begin sending the pair on covert operations in remote and romantic destinations to give them a kick along.

… he may just have to get creative when submitting the expenses to the payables department.


End file.
